Hywel
Hywel hadn’t had time to count his opponents, but at first glance the two sides appeared evenly matched—even with sending Evan to help Gareth and Gwen. Hywel had let John Fletcher lead the assault, but now he cursed himself for doing so. Hywel didn’t know what these men had done, exactly, but they’d harmed Gareth and Gwen, so Hywel wouldn’t have opted, as John had, to give the men a chance to surrender instead of simply killing them all.
Before Rhun had died, he’d told himself that he could go through life with a kind of amused detachment. It seemed to him that with his mother’s death at the very hour of his birth, the worst thing that could happen to him had happened before he’d lived a single day. He’d been wrong, however. Rhun’s death had proven that.
As he’d grown to accept the mantle of grief and anger as a permanent part of himself, that detached cynicism had been renewed—possibly even more so than before. He had thought, on the whole, that he didn’t care whether or not he lived or died, as long as Cadwaladr died before he did.
But tonight, the sight of Gareth and Gwen stumbling around the side of the mill, Gareth with a bloody bandage around his head, had sent a fire surging through him. By God, he did care. He wasn’t detached, and he was overcome by a rage like he’d never experienced in battle before.
Since Hywel and Cadifor had hung back, they had more room to maneuver than John did. When the lead conspirator, whom John had called Martin, raised his blade against the young watchman who’d accompanied Gareth and Gwen from around the corner of the old mill, Hywel and Cadifor spurred their horses forward. They didn’t have quite the same advantage as if they’d descended a hill or if they’d had more space to pick up speed, but Glew was swift and well-trained, worthy of his name, which meant valiant. In battle, he obeyed Hywel’s every wish almost before Hywel commanded it.
He cut through the first opponent like he was chopping wheat, slicing through his midsection with one swing of his arm and hardly noticing where he fell because he had already turned his attention to the next man to stand against him. That Englishman also fell in one blow, the side of his face sliced clean off by the downsweep of Hywel sword.
Blood spattered Hywel, but again, he hardly noticed. A red haze colored his vision, and his whole attention was directed at the leader, who was fighting the young man who’d come in with Gareth and who was completely outmatched. John Fletcher was struggling to reach him too, but he had several men and a cart between him and Cedric.
Then one of Martin’s minions put his axe through John’s horse’s forelock, and the horse crashed to the ground. Before he was crushed beneath the animal, John cleared his feet from the stirrups and rolled free. Unfortunately, that meant Cedric was even more on in own than he had been before.
But not for long. With a roar, Hywel spurred Glew at Martin while Cadifor got between John Fletcher and the man who’d killed his horse. It was all Martin could do to parry the first blow Hywel directed at him, which left him completely unprepared for the second.
Hywel had sharpened the blade of his sword such that just touching it could make a finger bleed. He’d done it with the vision of Cadwaladr’s neck bared before the sword, and even as he undercut Martin’s arm, slicing through it and then through the man’s neck in one complete blow, it was Cadwaladr’s face that he saw on Martin’s head, which hit the ground with a thud and rolled away from the body.
With a gleeful shout, Hywel checked his horse in front of the mill and turned, looking for more men to fight. At some point while Hywel wasn’t looking, Evan had returned to the clearing. He stood ten yards away, breathing hard, his sword bloody and a dead man at his feet. With such an assist from Gwynedd, the remainder of Martin’s men had been dispatched by John’s soldiers or were even now fleeing into the woods.
Hywel made to spur his horse after one of these escapees, but Cadifor caught his bridle before Glew could charge. Rain pattered on Cadifor’s upturned face, and he shouted something at Hywel, but Hywel couldn’t hear him through the thundering in his ears. He still held his sword high, and he was anxious to continue the battle, but then Evan was there too. He took Glew’s nose in his hands and talked to him.
“My lord, it’s over.” Cadifor’s words finally penetrated through the haze in Hywel’s mind.
He blinked and looked around as if seeing the scene for the first time. He realized he had no memory of how many men he’d killed or how he’d done it. Hesitatingly, he lowered his bloody sword. He had never lost himself like this, not in all his years of fighting. He still felt the anger at Rhun’s loss, but he was almost more angry at himself for losing control just when he needed it most.
“Get down, son,” Cadifor said, his voice no longer urgent.
Hywel obeyed, landing unsteadily on his feet beside his foster father. He rested his cheek against Glew’s neck, so exhausted he didn’t even know if he could walk. “What about the others?”
“We can leave them to John.” Cadifor tipped his head to indicate the mill and spoke to Evan. “Would you find out if there are more prisoners in there?”
“Consider it done.” Evan bent to clean the blood from his sword on the cloak of one the downed men and then walked towards the door to the mill, which was open.
“Are you hurt at all, my lord?” Cadifor said.
“No.” The short response was all he could manage. “You?”
Cadifor shook his head. “They weren’t soldiers. They should have known it was over before it started.”
John had been walking among the dead men, looking into their faces, his own pale in the torchlight and glistening with sweat and rain, but now he came over to where Hywel and Cadifor waited. “You and your men saved the day, my lord.”
Hywel nodded.
“It would have been less necessary if you had simply run Martin through at the start.” Cadifor said, as willing to instruct John as he was Hywel. “You were too noble for your own good,”
Hywel glanced to where Martin Carter’s head lolled several feet from where his body had fallen. He wished it was Cadwaladr’s head, understanding now that in the heat of the fight, he’d wanted it so badly that he’d made himself see it. Now that the rage had cooled, it left him shocked at how hot he’d burned.
John was called away by one of his men, and once again, Hywel was alone with Cadifor.
“Can you tell me what happened out there, my lord?”
“You know what happened.”
“You lost yourself.”
Hywel tipped his head back, so the drops of rain could cool his face. If it hadn’t been for how slick his sword hilt had been in his hand when he was fighting, he wouldn’t have even noticed that it was still raining. “It shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen. Rhun wouldn’t have let it happen.”
Cadifor moved closer so his face was only a foot away from Hywel’s. “Look at me, son.”
Hywel didn’t want to, but he had never been able to disobey that voice.
“I have loved you from the moment I first held you in my arms after the death of your mother. We don’t share blood, but you are my son as much as any of the others. Your name is Hywel ap Owain. You are a warrior-poet and the edling of Gwynedd. You are not Rhun.”
“My father—”
Cadifor gave him a small smile and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Your father needs you to be you. He’s already lost Rhun. Don’t deprive him of Hywel too.”
Hywel stared at Cadifor. He had never thought about his role that way, and as they looked at each other, something broke loose in the back of Hywel’s mind—not his sanity, not his control—but the relentless fear of failure that had been fueling his anger all this time.
Then Evan returned, even as Hywel was still reeling from Cadifor’s words. “There are a dozen women in there, my lord, Welsh and Irish.”
Cadifor made a guttural sound.
“What is the purpose of keeping them?” Hywel took a step to follow Evan. “Were they to work in the brothel?”
“They were to be sold as slaves.” Gareth’s voice rang out from behind Hywel, and he turned to see him and Gwen halting a few feet away. They’d ridden in on Evan’s horse. Gareth’s eyes were bright, and even as Hywel watched, he dropped to the ground in an easy motion.
“A moment ago, you were at death’s door,” Hywel said as his friend approached, after helping Gwen to dismount too. “Why didn’t you return to the monastery like I ordered?”
“Answers weren’t to be found at the monastery.” Gareth tipped his head to indicate his left shoulder. “Gwen patched me up enough to be going on with.”
“What answers are you talking about?” Hywel said. “Are you saying these men were slavers?”
Gareth gestured to a man who’d accompanied them down the track but whom Hywel didn’t know. “This is Conall, who serves Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster.”
“My lord prince.” Conall stepped closer and bowed. “King Diarmait has grown concerned about the stealing of women from his lands. I tracked the raiders to Shrewsbury and attempted to insinuate myself into their operation. My hope was to lure them to Ireland so that my king could arrest them.” He spread his hands wide. “I don’t know what gave me away, but Martin there—” he jerked his head to indicate the body on the ground, “—discovered something about me that made him distrustful. I have spent the last two days in that mill with the captive women.”
Gwen took up the explanation. “Most of the women are not Irish, however, but Welsh.”
Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “How is that possible? We’ve heard of no war in Wales that involved slave-taking.”
Gwen made a murmur of assent. “Which means either these women were abducted like those from Leinster—”
“—or their lord sold them himself,” Gareth said. “It has happened in the past, though not for a long time.”
Conall took in a breath. “As it turns out, the answer is both.”
Gareth gestured forward two more men, watchmen of John’s who held the arms of a woman between them. “She runs the brothel here.” He waved a hand at the two men. “You don’t have to hold her. She’s done nothing wrong as far as we know.”
As far as we know covered a lot of ground, but Hywel simply nodded at Gareth that he should continue.
“Jane, here, can describe the man she believes provided the funds for this undertaking, and who derives the most wealth from its success.” Gareth tipped his head to the woman. “Go on.”
The woman was quivering before Hywel: cold, wet, and scared. The yard had turned into one great puddle, and soon even well-oiled boots would be filling with water. Hywel hadn’t put up his hood, since he was still steaming from the fight, and if his cloak hadn’t been nearly soaked through, he would have offered it to the woman.
“The man was richly dressed—as much so as any nobleman—even Lord Ludlow. Those snooty merchants in Shrewsbury who pretend to be above what we do, even as they patronize us and reap our profits, have nothing on him.” Jane made a motion as if to spit on the ground, but then caught herself at the last moment, remembering where she was and whose company she was keeping. “He wore a sword, and spoke with a heavy Welsh accent.”
“What did he look like?” Gareth said.
Jane scoffed at that, as if what Gareth was interested in hearing was the least interesting part about the man. “Tall, fair hair going gray, a paunch he tries to hide. I never heard his real name. He only went by Gwynedd.” The woman canted her head. “Flann referred to him as the prince, though I never learned what he was supposed to be the prince of, seeing as how he was here and not in Wales.”
Gareth turned to John. “Too bad we didn’t take any of Martin’s men alive.”
John had been staring at the ground while the woman was talking, having pulled up his hood to protect his head from the rain, but now he looked up. “But we did.”
“Who?”
“The man you suspected: Flann. We took him into custody not two hours ago. It was to invite you to question him with me that I arrived at the monastery when I did, in time to ride here with Prince Hywel.”
Hywel allowed himself a mocking laugh. He had many of his own questions answered now. That Cadwaladr knew Martin Carter went a long way towards explaining how he’d come upon Adeline, Gwen’s lookalike. “Perhaps it’s time to tell me what this is all about.”